A network is formed by any two computers or processors which are connected by an information line. A provider of network services is often called a service provider. A specialized kind of service provider is an Internet service provider or ISP. More generally, however, an xSP may be a provider of an unspecified type of network services to users.
Many service providers provide simple bandwidth. However, there has been a demand for these providers to provide more advanced services such as virtual private networking, voice over IP (Internet Protocol), IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), and quality of service systems. Many of these services, and other similar services which can be provided over a network, are generically referred to as network services.
E-commerce transactions and sales often define sale items using extensible markup language or XML. XML can provide a way to describe the common characteristics of goods. The goods may be generically described using their common elements such as price, product description, number of goods in inventory, source, item numbers and other information.
Certain network services are available for purchase on-line. Often, the purchase may either include a line of services from a single vendor, or a single type of network service such as bandwidth. The single type of network service may be offered from different vendors at common locations using a common description. However, new and emerging network services may not be susceptible of description over that common schema.